Data on privileged versus ordinary access

James Aidan asks about my reaction to the renaming of the ‘Northern Ireland Protocol’ as the ‘Windsor Framework’, as the former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost has described that recent development (Viewpoint, March 9)Part of my reaction has been to submit a Freedom of Information Request asking for ‘the government’s official, quantitative, estimate of the enhanced economic value to the province of that ‘privileged’ access, compared to the ordinary access enjoyed elsewhere in the United Kingdom’.

Because despite the misleading impression that has been spread around we do already have access to the EU Single Market; otherwise, how could we have sold them goods worth £154billion in 2021?

But I may not get an answer, given that the government could not say how much a ‘Canada style’ free trade deal might be worth, and had no idea of the value of the Trade and Co-operation Agreement.

In April 2016, as part of George Osborne’s ‘Project Fear’, the Treasury claimed that participation in the EU Single Market was worth 6.2 per cent of our GDP, three times the estimate by the EU Commission.

Googling for ‘we cast doubt on the utility of their approach, highlighting methodological issues, unrealistic assumptions, and misrepresentations of established facts’ will locate a critique of that claim.

Namely, a December 2021 Max Planck Sciences paper by Semken and Hay, entitled ‘Gauging the Gravity of the Situation. The Use and Abuse of Expertise in Estimating the Economic Costs of Brexit’.

The authors were unable to say with certainty that the advent of the EU Single Market had had any impact at all on the UK economy, let alone providing it with the huge boost assumed by many people.

Dr D R COOPER Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead